The Best One Yet - 🍉 “HarryStyles+” — Apple’s concert strategy. College Sports’ super leagues. BlockFi’s 99% drop.

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Apple just launched a concert series with Mary J Blige and Harry Styles because in a Recession, Subscription is the Prescription. LA’s 2 top universities joined the Big 10, because college football has become a TV show. And BlockFi lost up to 99% of its value in 3 months (and Harry Styles explains this one, too), because the crypto winter is the riskiest of risky.$BTC $AAPL Follow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodAnd now watch us on YoutubeWant a Shoutout on the pod? Fill out this formGot the Best Fact Yet? We got a form for that tooLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. Welcome back. It is Tuesday, T-Boy, Tuesday, July 5th. And today's pod is the best one yet. TVOI, but it was the worst first half of the year for the stock market since 1970. The S&P 500, it's down 21% so far just this year. We do have some good news, though.

We do. This is our first ever episode where Harry Stiles is mentioned in two stories. Jack, what is our watermelon sugar? I mean, first story. Apple just announced a concert series with, Harry Stiles and Mary J. Blige. Apple, it has gone full R.E. Gold on the entertainment industry. For our second story, it's the biggest shake-up in college sports history.

College sports have become a TV show. Our third and final story is Crypto Unicorn Block 5. It was worth $4.5 billion just three months ago. Nick, it's dropped 99% in value in three months. All right, besties, here's why, because stocks, then crypto, then crypto stocks. Risky, riskier, riskiest of the risk. Harry Styles, that's the third time. Jack, what's going on for today?

Before we hit that wonderful mix. Honestly, a perfect mix to come back to. I'm so glad we recorded it this weekend. Everyone's always talking New Year's resolutions. Yeah, New Year's Resolution. You're like still hung over from your New Year's Eve party. But then, because of a rule you set for yourself, you're expected to hit up the gym the same New Year's day?

Yeties, that's why 80% of us quit those resolutions within a month of New Year's. My diet starts tomorrow. My diet ends tomorrow. Step on the scale. Step off the scale. I tried to go vegan last January. Yeah, you did. I remember well.

But then Jack found out on January 31st. All that honey? Jack, what's the deal with the honey? Honey is technically a vegan breaker. You broke the veganist on like January day two. By accident. I didn't know about it until January 28th. Ladies, look, here's the way Jack and I see it.

We need a resolution revolution. We need to disrupt this whole New Year's resolution thing. If so facto, that's why Jack and I, I introduced last year this idea, the mid-year's resolution. Same concept, but it starts July 1st, not January 1st. So there's less pressure. Because it's not a full year commitment. And it's twice as easy. Because it's half as long. And it's three times as fun. Because it starts in the summertime, not the brutal winter. Jack, my mid-year's resolution? I'm going to try to wear sunscreen every single day. On your face? Yeah, it's good for you. Yeah, let's not get ahead of

ourselves. You want to hear of mine? Yeah, what do you got? Only eat ice cream if it's out of an ice cream cone. Crush the cups. There we go. No, that means I'm either going to eat more ice cream, less ice cream, or more pie. Or you're invested in a waffle company. Yeties, for T-Boy Tuesday, we want to know your mid-year's resolutions. Hit us up at T-boy Pie.

And remember the best part about a mid-year's resolution. No one cares if you quit. Because we literally just made this thing. Well, let's in our three stories. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dawn. had an idea that caused a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is a norm. 50%. That's a fat tip.

Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more. So just start the show. Start the show. For our first story, Apple's newest product is music concerts. Apple's going on tour. Yeah.

Apple's going on stage with Mary J. Blige because subscription, it's the prescription. Actually, before we jump into that, is there a song of summer yet? I was wondering it all weekend, actually. Is it Deolipa? No, it's the one from Stranger Things. Oh, I know. It's the one from the Stranger Things premiere. It's from like the 80s and now it's back.

Running up that hill? I think so. Yeah. 1989. Kate Bush, like just having a good time. Sounds like you know the song. It's like a big TikTok song. It's a big time.

Yeah, it is. It's been big on TikTok. In the meantime, forget Apple's hardware business. Apple's entertainment apps have gone from side hustle to full hustle, big time. Oh, Nick, it's no iPhone business. Although, I think I saw Tim Cook in a mosh pit the other day. That's because Apple Music and Apple TV Plus have some huge subscriber numbers these days. Which leads to the news, Apple subtly last month launched a concert series called Apple Music Live.

They kicked it off with Harry Stiles, who is on stage with like the stylers cheering in the crowd. But here's the key. The whole concert is produced by Apple. And here's the catch. Only for Apple Music subscribers. They basically put a VIP rope around it, and it's for only Club Apple. So the crowd's going wild to Harry Styles. I'm picturing it.

He's belting out vocals on the stage. Apple produced the show. Jack, are you thinking Apple's looking less San Francisco and a lot more L.A.? That's exactly what I'm thinking. Yeties, that means Apple. Now produces the concert. Apple music streams that concert to your Apple TV Plus or HomePod, which plays the concert. So while Harry is singing watermelon sugar in real life in New York City,

It gets streamed simultaneously to 167 countries on Apple music at no cost to subscribers. Apple has vertically integrated Ari Gold. I got to say, I'm kind of into these live stream concerts. It's a fair thing. If you have good speakers, you kind of feel like you're at a concert if it's up on the screen. I think you're missing is the crowd surfing. That's what the Shagrug is for. Well, the new news just this weekend is that Mary J. Blige is next for the Apple concert.

Fresh off of her Super Bowl halftime game. her 30-year anniversary of the triple platinum album. The concert's going to be live in Washington Heights, New York City, but streamed to Apple Music to 167 countries. So it's clear Apple is kicking this up a notch. They're scaling their concert series. Now, we should point out, streaming concerts online, that's not revolutionary.

Right, like YouTube, live streams Coachella and Hulu, live streams Lollapalooza. Beyonce put her whole Coachella thing on Netflix. It was epic. But while the concept isn't new, what fascinates Jack and me is that it does have new value for Apple. So, Jack, what's the take? takeaway for our buddies over at Apple. In a recession, the prescription is subscription.

Vesties, the economy is slowing. We're halfway to a recession already. That means we're all spending a little less, and that's concerning for Apple's gadget sales. Yeah, Jack, if you're worried about losing your job, you may not upgrade to the new iPhone 19. That's a lot of $1,000. True. But if you're worried about losing your job, you're still probably not going to cut your Apple Music or Apple TV or your Apple Cloud subscriptions. In fact, going out less might mean you rely on subscriptions more during a recession. Right. You're not going out to dinner, but that means you need something to stream on TV that night. So the way Jack and I see it for Apple, the subscription is the recession prescription.

For our second story, right before the weekend, we got this surprise. The NCAA has become two super leagues and then everyone else. Because college sports aren't college sports anymore. No. They're TV shows. Full disclosure. Jack played in the NASCAR. I played in the Ivy League. Jack, how would you describe those two leagues approach to athletics?

A lot of rules. Yeah. Big long off seasons. Uh-huh, uh-huh. There was, it was. You got to study abroad. It was great. Well, on the other hand, the Big Ten football teams, they don't care about your spring semester in Barcelona. You're not going to Bartholona. No, they care about the big money. Shocking news hit the college sports industry last week.

Yeah, USC and UCLA are leaving the PAC-12 conference to join the Big Ten in 2024. So let's zoom out. There's dozens of athletic conferences in the NCAA, but there's really just two super leagues. I'm sorry, Jack. I think I just heard Scott Van Peltz squeal. It's all about these two super conferences who are trying to create mini NFLs. Now, here's what Jack and I found fascinating about this college sports story. We've seen this before in business in other industries. When there's a fragmented industry, power gets consolidated. Food delivery apps, semiconductors, media companies.

they create value by teaming up when they're a bunch of different random players. And college football, there's absolutely no arguing anymore. It's a business. And there's an oligopoly now with two super leagues dominating. Okay, Jack, let's jump in. T-Boy style. Who is in the SEC, the Southeast Conference now? You got the OGs, like Alabama, Georgia, Auburn, Florida, LSU, and Old Miss.

And who are the new guys jumping in? Texas and Oklahoma. The SEC now has 16 teams and, yes, the best barbecue in the country. let's move over to the new big 10, which doesn't have 10 teams. No, no, the new big 10 is still the OGs. He got Michigan, Ohio State, Indiana, Iowa, classics. Then you got La LaLand, UCLA and USC. It's a big 10, but it's got 16 teams.

What's going on there? Makes no sense. Oh, wait, that's not even the wildest part of these new teams in these two big super leagues. Think about practically how it's going to work with UCLA, which is based in Los Angeles. Playing Rutgers. Which is all the way. in New Jersey. The kids are going to have to fly across country on Friday, play on Saturday, get over their jet lag after the game's already happened. And you're expecting them to finish the

term paper for Psych 201? I guess they're going to be in first class. And it also means that UCLA kids are going to play Minnesota in ice hockey. Which means you got a bunch of Californians learning to shoot a knuckle puck. I know the Mighty Ducks are based in Anaheim, but that's different. Jack, what about when you were in the Neskak playing football? How many games were you playing back then? We played eight games a season. It was a great fall. But the National Championship Georgia Bulldogs, how many games are they playing? 15.

Almost twice as many games as my adorable little D3 conference. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies in the college sports industry? College sports have become a TV show. So that's actually the take from our reporter buddy, Kendall Baker, over at Axiost Sports. Because college sports were historically based on culture, geography, and amateurism. Right, Jack, you had Michigan-versy. Ohio State. You had Lehigh versus Lafayette. You had Miami versus Florida. It made geographical sense. Regional rivalries. Local fans who hated each other and rooted for the students on the field

who also play sports. But here's the recent switch. Now colleges want every week's football game to be must-see TV. Universities have evolved from amateur athletics to media production companies. Here's how to picture it. The players are the actors. The athletic department is the studio and the field is the set. College sports have become a TV show. And now we're at our sponsor, Robin Hood. We see ads all the time. All over the place, 10 bucks off this $5 promo code for that, Jack. You can buy three suits. You can get one free. But something we always thought was cool about Robin Hood, the free stock promo. Yeah, this was wild. The promo isn't like some X amount of dollars. It's one stock. If you signed up for Robin Hood, they'd thank you with a single share in a publicly traded company on the house.

And that free stock promo, it actually helped drive Robin Hood's growth and got new users in the stock market right away. One of the most creative moves in promotional history. So when Robin Hood became our sponsor, naturally, Jack and I said, we got to do the free stock giveaway. If you're not on Robin Hood yet, you want to get started, go to robin hood.com slash t-boy and get cash to select your free stock. That's Robinhood.com slash TBOY. Certain limitations apply all investments involved risk. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC, Robin Hood is no longer affiliated with us. of the podcast. For our third and final story, while Jack is stockpiling ice cream cones for his mid-year's

resolution, BlockFi was worth billions of dollars, and now it's worth pennies on the dollar. Everyone needs an emergency ice cream cone supply. Yeti, stocks are down, crypto's down more, but stocks of crypto companies are down the worst. Yeties, Nick and I, we miss Ben the Bitcoin. Yeah, Jack, how much did Bitcoin change in the last year? It's dramatic. Well, it rose from 10,000 to 65,000 in just over one year.

Yeah, and in that period, crypto platforms were soaring even faster than crypto the crypto. These were the good times for crypto. Venture capital money was plowing into any company doing block anything because every platform was trying to dominate the doge coin. Money was made in cryptocurrencies, but bigger money was made in crypto startups. Ever since November, it's been the opposite. Yeah. And one company, one company called BlockFi tells the whole story.

As Harry Stiles puts it, it's a sign of the times. Okay, Jack, let's travel back a year ago. BlockFi, a crypto lender, hit a whopping $4.5 billion valuation, not too shabby. Pretty big. Blockfi was the bank of Bitcoin. They were whipping up savings accounts, loans. You could buy and sell crypto. You could do anything crypto on this platform.

Yeah. Well, last week, we were pretty shocked to see that that $4.5 billion blockfi was getting sold for as low as $25 million. This is the frostiest news of the crypto winter so far. We repeat, we didn't say billion dollars. They sold for $25 million. Now, according to the deal, the price could be as high as $280 million. But either way, this is a fire sale.

BlockFi is selling for less than 5% of its value of just last year. Sit down, stand up, sit back down again. It could be down as much as 99%. This acquisition by FTX, which is the Sam Bankman, freed company shook crypto confidence even further. So, Jack, can we sprinkle on a little bit of market context here? Stocks are down 20% this year, which is bad. Okay. Bitcoin's down 60%, which is worse. Yeah. BlockFi is down as much as 99%, which is the worst. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are all of us in crypto? Stocks are down, crypto's down bigger. Crypto stocks are down the

biggest. Yet he's on the spectrum of financial assets. Equity in companies, aka, stock. That's one of the riskiest out there. Newton's first law of investing is that the greater risk you're willing to take, the higher potential reward you can get. Well, crypto is even riskier than stocks are. And Jack, back to Newton's first law. Crypto investors who took the huge risk of crypto, they got five or 10x returns in 2020 and 2021. But now we're seeing the other side of this reward, which is that big losses can come with that big risk. Newton's first law with stocks down, crypto is down even more. And stocks of crypto companies are down the worst.

BlockFi losing 99% of its value in three months captures that relationship. The riskiest assets are down the most right now. Crypto stocks are the riskiest of risky. Jack, can you whip up the mid-year takeaways for us over there? Apple is now producing a legit concert series, and it's also streamed to the Apple Music app. Subscriptions are a recession prescription. For our second story, college sports just got realigned into two years. super leagues and then there's everyone else. College sports, they're now a TV show. And our third and

final story, a crypto company stock, BlockFi, has lost up to 99% of its value. Jack, can you hate us with Newton's first law of finance? The riskier the stock, the bigger the potential reward, but also the bigger the potential loss. Let that apple hit you on the head. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one DM'd over to us by Leah, an IP attorney all the way in Minnesota. Last week, we went kind of nuts, T-boy style, on the trickiest of trademarks and the craziest and the craziest. Leah points out that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office goes all the way back to 1836, and it deserves your respect. Well, we point out that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is crucial because it motivates innovators. It is the foundational agency to capitalism to let people own their inventions.

But trademarks, copyrights, and patents, they're not all the same. No, technically, patents are what protect inventions. Like a spaceship. And copyrights are what protect creative works. Like Star Wars. And trademarks are what protect brands. Like Darth Vader and his breathing sound. There you go.

Forget law school. Consider yourself a patent lawyer now. That's the bar baby. Now if Ohio State sues you, you had it coming. Roll the disclosures, Jack. Yet is, you look fantastic to kick off the four-day week. And remember, if you got a mid-year's resolution, tag us on Datty Boy Pop.

Jack and I want to see him. If anyone else wants to join the ice cream cone bandwagon, there's plenty of room. Send Nixon SBF 100. Now I kind of hate my mid-year's resolution, Jack. Let's start you. I'll see tomorrow. And before we go, happy birthday to longtime Yeti, Julia Pack over in New York City. And happy birthday to Yush in San Diego.

And Brad Kohan over in PSL, Florida. And Arturo, the runner Panini. In Tucson, Arizona. Not a T-Bone steak. and Maria Maples is turning five in Jacksonville, Florida. Maria, I heard, knows our jingle by heart. Yes, she does. And Chris and Nicole, happy two-year anniversary over in Tempe, Arizona.

Congrats to Gift Chujaro, who just got into the Wharton MBA program. And Jenny Janice, congrats on getting on the Quality Council over in New York Life. Congrats to Lacey Brown for getting a new job over in Oregon. And Thomas Bates got the new job in Los Angeles. Congrats to Bryce Allen for getting a new gig in Dover, Pennsylvania. While Umberto Imani just got promoted over at Price Waterhouse Cupert's in Australia. Marvin is moving on up. From contractor to full time, congrats.

And Zach Smith, happy seventh anniversary over in Essex Junction, Vermont. Go kernels. Eh, go hornets too. This is Jack. Nick and I both own some Bitcoin, and we both own stock of Apple and Robin Hood. And now a word from our sponsor, Robin Hood. The first time we swiped up to buy a stock on Robin Hood, whoa. Yeah, Jack, you get like that.

Like a little vibration, boom, you've done a trade. It wasn't just an incredible app. Robin Hood added incredible resources too. That started with the Help Center. Everyone has that. Then came Robin Hood snacks, digestible financial news. Then came the news feed, providing free third-party news from trusted sources. And then came Robinud learned.

A huge trove of articles explaining what the heck an ETF is. Yeah, spoiler. It's like a stock smoothie. Jack and I actually wrote the article in that way. If you're not on Robinud yet, want to get started, go to robinode.com slash T-boy and choose a free stock. It's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-Y. Certain limitations apply. All investments involve risk. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member S-I-P-C. And by the way, Robin Hood is no longer affiliated

with us or the podcast. T-Boy Tuesday, let us know your mid-year resolution. It is up at T-Boy pot. Remember, the best part about a mid-year resolution. No one cares if you quit because we literally just made this up. I love the honesty that this is just a totally made-up thing. You don't need to take seriously. Thank you.